Port #3 – Nassau Bahamas

Hey blog followers,

It’s been a couple days since we last communicated with you.

This blog post will cover our 4 day stay in Nassau.

Day 0 – Nassau (Arrival Day April 5th)

We had a pretty rough ride from Chub Cay to Nassau. We had expected a rough ride, but we did not want to get stuck on Chub Cay for 4 days waiting for the winds to die on Sunday.

We’ll, we should have stayed at Chub Cay !
The seas were so rough, that the auto pilot kept shutting off.
So it was about 6 hours of steering up/down the waves hitting the port side bow, attempting to balance ride comfort, minimize roll, and stay on our course line.

While underway from Chub, we got our next piece of bad news – the Marina we wanted to stay at was booked (OMG-RATZ)
We then called 4-5 other marinas, all of them were booked (OMG-DOUBLE RATZ).

Many of you know me as “a planner” having missed no details. Well, it was a combination of –
1. Bimini & Chub marinas were easy to get into with 1 days notice.
2. A couple of the Exuma harbormasters told me – 1-2 days in advance is enough.
3. We did not really know when we were wanting to go to Nassau until the last minute, due to weather.
That’s my story for not having a Nassau reservation, and I’m sticking to it !

So while underway in 6-8ft waves, we frantically searched for some safe Anchorages.
The wind was out of the E/NE, so we needed to find an Anchorage on the west side of the island.
The waves wanted us to go east & north which would have made us miss the entire island of Nassau.
So we had to tac on our course a little.
We ended up approaching the island in the middle of Nassau, about 5 miles from the west side that we desired to anchor.
We had to surf the following seas back down to the west end of Nassau for our anchorage.

We ended up at a pretty cool honey-hole called the West Bay Anchorage. It is a large U-shaped cove open on the west side, surrounded by a bunch of nice homes. The Red Balloon is the marina we wanted to go to, the Blue Dot is our Boat. We wanted to go the Palm Cay Marina at the red balloon because it was away from all the chaos of Nassau, but close enough to taxi/Uber to for site seeing. And Palm Cay was planned back in March before we knew of 20mph east winds.


West Bay Anchorage photos –

In spite of the 3 sided protection, we are still experiencing a lot of swinging on the anchor line and a slow side-side roll. There are about 40 other boats with us in the large bay.

We welcomed ourselves to Nassau with a swim in the beautiful Bahamian waters of West Bay.

The arrival day ended with a beautiful sunset & a fabulous Taco dinner from Deena.

Day1-Nassau (Thu-Apr6)
Thursday was a very low-key day recuperating from the ride from Chub.

It was a work & task day.
Jerry did engine, Bilge checks.
We worked on the Audio System Speakers.
We washed the salt off off the Isinglass using the magic salt away product (magic potion, it works great).

But most importantly,  we spent most of the day calling marinas in Nassau for our remaining 2 days until the winds die down on Sunday.

Guess what – after telling us yesterday(wed) that they were booked thru the weekend,  we were able to get into the Marina that we desired in the first place – Palm Cay Marina.

So – persistence pays off, sqeeky wheel gets the grease, keep calling/bugging the marinas.

Day 2-Nassau (Fri-Apr7)

Anchor up = 09:15 hrs
Departure = 09:30 hrs

On to Palm Cay Marina for 2 nights , before we finally depart for the first of the Exuma Islands – Highborne Cay !

Well it’s been 3 days since a land shower or shave while being “on-the hook (at anchor). The Mahi does have shower facilities, but we are conserving our fresh water because it’s expensive in the Bahamas (typically $0.45/gallon).
Plus I made a bet with my buddy Jerry Sheller that I could go 1 month without a shave.
It seemed a good time to launch the bet.
Well, it looks like Jerry Scheller wins the bet, I can’t stand it.


Some guys just look bettery with facial hair & the ‘scuffy look”.
Take for instance this guy –


We arrived at the long awaited Palm Cay Marina at about 12:30 hrs.
The waves were still high, but we were on the leeward side of the island, so they were only 3-4 footers.
But our course was directly into the waves, so the boat and passengers did pretty well.

I had done a lot of reaserch on the marinas in Nassau.
We did not really want to stay on the north side of the island & all the chaos near the Atlantis resort & 15 other marinas in a 5 mile radius.
That is when Palm Cay Marina came into the picture back in Jan/Feb of this year.
Palm Cay had great reviews & photos, was in a quiet area of the island, and looked really good on-line.
But you never really know about a place until you get there.

Maybe it was the joy of being back in a comfy marina, or the end of 3 bouncy/rolly days on the water, or that we are just becoming better friends.
But during our usual “Safe Arrival Toast, we ended up with some unique photo ops:)

So after the “Safe arrival drinks” we started scoping out the marina.
Remember what I said about – you never really know until you are there ?

WOW, THIS PLACE IS AWESOME.
IT’S BEAUTIFUL.
THE STAFF ARE ALL REALLY NICE.
THE FOOD IS GREAT.
THEY HAVE A GREAT POOL.
THEY HAVE A GREAT BEACH.
THEY HAVE A GREAT RESTAURANT & 2 BARS.

I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

After a few relaxation hours at the pool, we got cleaned up and went to dinner at The Pink Octopus Restaurant, one of two restaurants on-site.

Maybe it was the relief of being in a nice cozy marina again, maybe it was the beauty of the surroundings, or maybe it was just the great music. But the Luck’s had some romance in the air, tickling all the way down to their feet.

Jonell & I did not dance tonight, but we did share an excellent Shrimp & Calamari Pizza 🙂

Day=4 (Saturday, Apr 8)
Hummm – ok, it’s Saturday night and it appears that everyone is on the internet & everyone in the marina is using Verizon cell service.

All the lovely photos that we are sending you, usually take about 10 seconds to load.
Tonight, the photos are taking so long to load, that WordPress is timing out and not loading the photos (Errors).

The bottom line was – nothing really new for today.
More Pool, a little Beach, and another nice dinner.

We are off tomorrow from Nassau to Highborne Cay, the first of the Exuma Islands.

It will be about a 4 hour ride (36 miles), and the water is supposed to be perfect (note = Windfinder Pro & Sailflow are pretty good at identifying which days are good to go, but become less reliable on wave height predictions as the wind level goes up).

Talk to you in a couple days.